Tagged: As-Yet Untitled Ghost Novel #1

Research Can Be Entertaining

Every writer learns quickly how perilously deep the research rabbit hole can be. Perhaps it was better when we had to go to a library, or at least to a bookshelf, instead of being able to summon virtually any fact (often dozens of contradictory versions of it!) with a few keystrokes. Nowadays you can easily lose track of whether you’re writing or researching. Not that research is bad, just that it’s got a way of turning into procrastination.

We do our share of web research, for sure. But we supplement it with other forms of information. Since we’ve been working on the Ghost Series, our movie selections have skewed much more to supernatural horror. This way we can have movie night and count it as a work session — it’s research!

Books are great, too. We have one from 1908 that we got at a flea market, which deals with spiritualism. We bought it mainly for the gorgeous purple cover, but it turns out to be filled with words. Jen’s already read it, and now it’s Kent’s turn. We’re also about halfway through a mammoth anthology of “classic” ghost stories, mostly from the 19th century.

Of course, cinematic portrayals must always be considered suspect. It’s risky to use movies (or novels) as sources of historical fact. What they can provide, besides inspiration, is a view of the day-to-day norms from another time period. Incidental descriptions of the streets, clothing, and customs are reliable precisely because they were meant to be a backdrop. Contemporary audiences would simply perceive the context of “the normal world” and focus on the story.

A writing partner is someone who’ll bring the popcorn to “research night.”

Off To A Flying Start!

We have more progress to report on the Ghost Novel. Jen completed the first wave of stubs, and has now hefted a pickaxe and joined Kent in the prose mines. (We’d belabor that metaphor, but we need to save the true gems for the manuscript.)

Naturally, there was an immediate obstacle. Much as with the questions about the setting that we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Jen’s scene revealed that our specs for a certain “machine” were incomplete. We’ve known about this contraption ever since the early stages of planning and plotting the series, but now it needed to actually be described. Which means decisions must be made that will affect many scenes down the line.

We’re still trying to get back up to full speed with the whole actual-writing-the-book part of writing a book, so needing to pause and hash out details was frustrating. But having a writing partner means having someone to hash such things out with.

No, After *You*

A month ago we were lamenting how intimidating it’s been for us to reenter composition mode. “Oh, woe,” we cried. “It’s been so long since we wrote actual prose!” And “It’s been literal years since we began a new story world, how ever shall we remember how to do it?”

We can be quite melodramatic when it suits us.

In the weeks since that declaration, we came up with myriad excuses for not actually setting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard. It was, frankly, getting ridiculous. During one of our daily forest snow strolls with the pooches, we finally diagnosed ourselves. We were each waiting for the other one to go first, each holding the door open, hoping the other half of the writing team would charge through into the unknown.

Whoever goes first makes a bunch of creative decisions that impact the rest of the novel. They set the tone with language use. They set the pace of the prose. They give us the first glimpse inside a new character’s head and heart. It’s a lot of responsibility!

Usually Kent will jump in and write the earliest scenes while Jen wraps up the last few stubs of the first batch. It’s a process that’s worked well for us, but at least the last 4 novels we wrote were all set in existing story worlds. There are a lot fewer unknowns in an existing story world. Kent wasn’t sure Jen wanted him to plunge in this time. Perhaps she wanted to be the style master this time? Please? No. Being the one to write 100% of the stubs (maybe 99.5%), Jen feels like she already has enough influence over how the story is told.

And so, with great fanfare, Kent slipped into his speedo and took the plunge! This very week saw the minting of the inaugural words, sentences, and paragraphs of the Rune Skelley Ghost Quadrilogy! And what words (and sentences and paragraphs) they are!

A good writing partnership is one where both partners are happy to either lead or follow.

A Delicate Balancing Act

Something we’ve discovered about ghost stories from working on ours: they have ghosts in them. Who knew? And ghosts can be scary! But not too scary, at least not all the time…

As we get into a finer level of detail about everything, we discover that our ghosts must be around in the background of a lot of scenes that we didn’t really envision as “ghost scenes” and where we don’t want them to interfere. But we do want the ghosts to matter, to be an important element of the story world. A genuine menace at times. So, a lot of our recent conversations have dealt with resolving this apparent contradiction. And it’s turning out that we aren’t really trying to have it both ways, but just that our earlier, broader outlines of the story didn’t require us to dial things in like we must now that we’re getting gritty with it.

There’s a line we need to walk between too much chaos and not enough. That balancing act is what creates the feeling of suspense for the reader.

The question of how easy it is to reach our main story location is another whose answer seems to depend on when you ask us. The difficulty of the journey is occasionally a plot point, but it can’t be so arduous that no one would ever be able to get there. Again, conversations just need to get more granular so we can establish what it is about the terrain that raises challenges, so different characters can have different experiences without it looking like we’re changing the rules on them.

A writing partner is someone who’ll catch you if you fall off the tightrope.

Cartographer’s Blues

Sometimes there’s a lot of drawing involved in being a writer.

One of the artifacts we generated in our pre-writing for the Ghost Series is a map of the principle setting. It’s a rather complicated map, not only because the setting itself has many interesting quirks but also because the map shows how things change over the course of about a century.

But, Kent didn’t mind taking that on. It let him relive his dungeon-master glory days a bit, and simultaneously offered an excuse to use lots of layers in the Illustrator file.

We’ve included maps in some of our actual books. So far, this one is for our own use during the project, and we haven’t really decided about sharing it with our readers. All we know for now is that it’s going to be a living document that will be updated as we make new discoveries about our locale. In other words, the map that shows how things change over time will, itself, change over time.

Another trick we might use is building it in 3D with modeling clay. The terrain is quite unusual, and flat drawings might not suffice for making sure we both picture it the same way. This is something we haven’t done on past projects, but it fits our penchant for the tangible and the colorful.

A writing partner is someone who’ll help you chart the unknown.

What Will the New Story World Be?

We’ve begun the process of figuring out what we’ll write after we finish the Ghost Series. Technically we haven’t even started writing that series yet, so it probably sounds like we’re getting ahead of ourselves, but it’s good to have projects we can juggle so we don’t get burned out.

So far we’re still looking at our possibilities from a miles-high vantage point, a choice between two basic options. Will it be an extension of one of our previous story worlds, or something totally new?

We can see ways to add on to all three of the existing trilogies. In some scenarios this would mean continuation of the original narrative, while in others it would mean exploring uncharted sections within an established world.

We also have a few thoughts about how we could tackle a type of story we’ve never written before. That’s how the Ghost Series came to be — doing a ghost story was something we wanted to check off the list. There are myriad kinds of stories we haven’t done yet, but the tricky part is finding a way to tell that type of tale in a Rune Skelley type of world.

A good writing partner is someone who’ll invent whole new worlds with you, and then follow you to their ends.

Some Good Writing Advice From Our Dogs

We’ve put in a ton of work on the ghost novels over the past nine months or so. And we got a lot accomplished! All four books are outlined, we documented the cast and the setting, created backstories and histories for all of that, devised the rules of supernature that we intend to play by, etc. It’s our most elaborate and thorough rainbow exercise ever, by far.

What we haven’t done for quite a while is actually write. And now it’s pretty much time to do that, assuming we can remember how.

As we hiked through the snowy woods the other day with our assistants, Lady Marzipan and the Bandit Lord, our conversation focused on returning to prose-mode. We reminded each other of what that feels like, and we must confess that we fretted a little about how out of practice we are. Both of us were thinking about the size of the job we’re about to take on, writing a tetralogy in an entire new story world and playing with tropes we haven’t used much before. It was feeling a bit intimidating.

Fortunately, the Bandit Lord had some good advice. He told us not to obsess about it, to just stay loose and let it happen. Lady Marzipan then pointed out that we had probably already talked about it as much as we ought to. We had psyched ourselves up, and we didn’t want to psych ourselves out.

They might not be much help with grammatical issues, but those two assistants of ours really do earn their keep when it comes to moral support.

A great writing partner is, sometimes, someone who licks your face.

Dust Off the Ouija Board

The first Friday post in January is traditionally when we talk about our writing plans for the upcoming year. Our current project is a series of ghost stories, so it only makes sense to consult the spirit world for some guidance. The sole Ouija Board we have is an adorable little tin box of mints, but we’ll make the best of it.

Oh Great Spirits, tell us: what does 2022 hold in store for us?

Now imagine the planchette gliding eerily across the board, painstakingly spelling out our message from the Beyond.

SpoooOOooOoooky!

 

The spirits say that we will begin by writing Ghost Book #1, mostly in the Writing Cave. But since it is darkest winter and there is no fireplace in that room, we might defy expectations and propriety and work in the Auxiliary Writing Cave several times a week. Even if it means we might need to endure snuggling with — gasp! — a corgi. Who are we to argue with the spirits?

Sometimes composition goes quickly for us, and sometimes it does not. The spirits cannot say how long it will take to complete the first book. They do say that when it is complete we will either steam right ahead into writing Book 2, or if we need to look away and recharge our batteries, we may switch to editing Sibling of Music Novel. The future is clouded and they cannot say for sure.

The spirits have one more prediction for us: we should be able to squeeze in the European trip we’ve had on hold since 2020. Fingers crossed they’re right!

As Predicted

Way back in January we made a writing plan for 2021. Let’s see how closely we followed it.

In true oxymoronic fashion, we wanted to start by finishing something. Editing the Science Novels was handily done, so — Check!

Next was plotting the Ghost Series, which gets another check.

And here’s where things fall apart a little. We were a smidge optimistic when we made our plan, and thought we’d have enough time left in the year to start the actual writing. Hilariously, we left open the possibility that we’d need to decide what to do after we finished the first Ghost Novel. Ha ha! Building four plot rainbows took longer than anticipated, and the actual composition hasn’t begun yet. But slow progress is still progress, and we’re very excited about what’s in store.

One other item on our To Do list that still needs to be addressed: deciding what will come after the Ghost Books. Extremely preliminary discussions on that topic have begun. A good writing partner is someone you enjoy having discussions with, no matter how preliminary they might be.

Toodles 2021

Pull up a comfy chair, dear reader, and together we’ll review what we blogged about over this past twelve-month. Are you comfortable? Would you care for an adult beverage before we begin?

We started the year by pontificating about Point of View. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that we have strong opinions on the matter.

We closed out edits on our Science Novels as we closed out January, and our Ghost universe took over all of our work sessions. It involved a lot of brainstorming and plot-rainbowing. And we started watching Supernatural — an activity we’re still engaged in (there are a lot of episodes!).

And speaking of televisual entertainment, in March we offered up an incomplete list of our quarantine viewing material. And even now, 9 months later, we still haven’t braved a movie theatre. We enjoyed Only Murders in the Building, recently finished up the newest seasons of What We Do in the Shadows and the Great British Baking Show, and are almost done with Schmigadoon!, DreamCorp LLC, and Party Down. We recently watched Raiders of the Lost Ark for the umpteenth time (inspired by watching Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made), and our most recent DVD was Harold and Maude (technically a rewatch, but it had been so long that Kent didn’t remember seeing it).

The dogs made a cameo appearance in April, then we went on to wax rhapsodic about our plot rainbow again some more. We were very proud of the concept we had for the ending, which has since gone through several further iterations. It’ll be interesting to see how much it further it morphs by the time we write it.

The joys and tribulations of plotting an entire 4-book series at once occupied much of May. And then our kids came for a visit!

The halfway point of all that outlining came in June, and that’s also when we started talking about redecorating the Writing Cave. We’re happy to say that the outlining is now complete. The Writing Cave reno, not so much. The big stuff is all done and the room is totally usable, but the finishing details are stalled.

In July we were a little hung up on how complicated our plotting process is, so we added a new member to our SkelleyCo writing team: our beloved white board!

When August rolled around we got started on Book 4 (the final Ghost Book for those of you keeping track at home). It’s kind of enormous, and we had to chop all of our paper squares in half so all the characters would fit on one side. We fretted that the 400 magnets we bought might not be enough. Fear not – we had a whopping 13 or 14 magnets leftover at the end.

September was light on blogging because we were shoulder-deep in the Writing Cave renovation, but we did manage to debate whether or not it was possible for a character to be too villainous. Conclusion: yes.

The end of plot-rainbowing was in sight in October, and we continued our passionate love affair with our white board. That thing is truly worth its weight in gold. And in addition to that we found time to update our Stichomancy Writing Prompt Generator.

In November we finally finally completed all the plotting for the whole entire Ghost Series.  But that doesn’t mean we’re ready to start writing just yet. When we aren’t hosting visitors or helping our children move, Kent is working on maps and Jen is typing up the world’s longest, strangest outline (the old-school kind with Roman Numeral and regular numbers,  and letters both capital and lowercase). The actual writing should commence soonish. Maybe in December, maybe in January.

And finally, in December we said a tearful goodbye to a beloved member of our critique group. It can’t be said frequently or forcefully enough: Fuck Cancer.